Eoris is a two book set contained in a sturdy slipcase. I reviewed the first book earlier so reading that may be informative. The second physical book contains Book Three (Thought) which is dedicated entirely to the mechanical system underlying Eoris including most (but not all) of the information needed to build a character. I'm not going delve too deep into the actual mechanics (other then the basic system) since crunch is not my forte and I haven't had a chance to play Eoris which will more greatly inform on the viability of the system.
Book Three is broken up into 9 chapters starting out with the basic system information and working through the various systems from there. The basic system shares a lot of similarities to White Wolf's Storyteller system but relies on rolling D20s rather then D10s and includes a special "Essence" die which depending on its roll can greatly change the outcome regardless of whether you succeed or fail with your overall pool. The system does add some more granularity then White Wolf by allowing changing of both the target number or the number of successes needed. Systematically I think this allows for a lot of fine tuning on the part of the Narrator. One problem in the book with having these two different ways at scaling power is that the reader must pay careful attention to whether a bonus is modifying the target number (thus making a -1 a good thing) or modifying the dice pool (-1 doesn't look quite so good now). Sometimes this isn't readily apparent especially in the race selection area.
Eoris has support for social combat which interestingly can coincide with physical combat and can reduce overall die pools and inflict status anomalies onto others. This seems to make social combat a vastly more useful affair especially since that allows non-physical characters a chance to contribute to combat beyond just hiding. Now they can hide and hurl insults at their foes reducing them to mental slag heaps.
Character creation feels rather complicated. Oddly the reader is required to reference the other book for information on some powers and abilities. This seems somewhat less then ideal but other then that the sections are fairly straightforward. There are a large amount of powers and spells (called Songs here) to choose from although none of them feel terribly exciting. Useful, yes, but nothing that seemed to reach off the page. Likewise we're given beautiful images of a wide assortment of rare weapons and it felt like their individual abilities weren't as awesome as they looked. Some of this feel may be mitigated by actual play showing off their true strengths but as a read it just felt un-impressive.
Overall this book felt like it could use a little better organization just like its partner. Editing was again impressive and art is still amazing. It stills feels like to me that it's missing some of a greater potential so it's going to sit at 7 out of 10.
Next Up: Gatecrashing
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Exalted: Scroll of Sorcery Vol 2 The Black and White Treatises
Exalted: Scroll of Sorcery Vol 2 The Black and White Treatises provides the real firepower for any sorcerer or necromancer in Exalted. This book is actually two books with one on either side (so while reading White Treatise to get to Black Treatise you flip the book over). It's quirky but allows for obvious separation of the two similar but different topics.
White Treatise goes over the origins of sorcery, the process the for learning it, where to learn it and what schools those places follow, and just who knows what sorcery and how deep that knowledge is. This gives a much deeper understanding and background to the system and allows for many more interesting stories while a character tries to learn sorcery. Of course the main meat of this book are spells and there are a lot of them. Unsurprisingly most of these spells are for the Emerald (1st) circle but Sapphire (2nd) and Adamant (3rd) circles get their fair share as well. A decent amount of the spells just do direct damage to some degree but there are also many spells that creatively solve other problems or can be used in interesting ways to the sorcerer and her circle's advantage.
The Black Treatise is almost an exact mirror of the White Treatise except that it covers the art of necromancy. It does make good on the point that necromancy is not just "evil" or "dark" sorcery but a separate power source that is designed to do a little bit different things then sorcery (although the two obviously overlap a bit). There are a wide array of necromancy spells available allowing for many different themes of necromancer. It should be noted that in 2nd Edition this book is the only one that contains necromancy spells so it's a must if your character wants to use it. Abyssals only has the 3 requisite charms.
Overall this was a highly quality book with a diverse range of spells and interesting history and geography and artifacts relating to sorcery and necromancy useful to Storyteller and players alike. If spellcasting is going to be used this book is almost essential unless someone wants to do a lot of legwork in creating their own spells. A solid Exalted supplement. This gets a 9 out of 10.
Available in physical* and PDF.
Links: White Wolf Store, Amazon, DriveThruRPG, and Noble Knight
Next Up: Eoris Part 2
White Treatise goes over the origins of sorcery, the process the for learning it, where to learn it and what schools those places follow, and just who knows what sorcery and how deep that knowledge is. This gives a much deeper understanding and background to the system and allows for many more interesting stories while a character tries to learn sorcery. Of course the main meat of this book are spells and there are a lot of them. Unsurprisingly most of these spells are for the Emerald (1st) circle but Sapphire (2nd) and Adamant (3rd) circles get their fair share as well. A decent amount of the spells just do direct damage to some degree but there are also many spells that creatively solve other problems or can be used in interesting ways to the sorcerer and her circle's advantage.
The Black Treatise is almost an exact mirror of the White Treatise except that it covers the art of necromancy. It does make good on the point that necromancy is not just "evil" or "dark" sorcery but a separate power source that is designed to do a little bit different things then sorcery (although the two obviously overlap a bit). There are a wide array of necromancy spells available allowing for many different themes of necromancer. It should be noted that in 2nd Edition this book is the only one that contains necromancy spells so it's a must if your character wants to use it. Abyssals only has the 3 requisite charms.
Overall this was a highly quality book with a diverse range of spells and interesting history and geography and artifacts relating to sorcery and necromancy useful to Storyteller and players alike. If spellcasting is going to be used this book is almost essential unless someone wants to do a lot of legwork in creating their own spells. A solid Exalted supplement. This gets a 9 out of 10.
Available in physical* and PDF.
Links: White Wolf Store, Amazon, DriveThruRPG, and Noble Knight
Next Up: Eoris Part 2
Friday, February 18, 2011
Adventure!
Adventure! is a pulpy action game set in the mid-1920s of Earth where players play slightly above average humans pushing the bounds of science, exploration and humanity. For my take it provides the timeframe of Call of Cthulhu but instead of a theme of incomprehensible cosmic horror we get a tone of hopeful optimism about the future. It's all the 3rd part of the Aeon Universe trilogy of games from White Wolf. The book has a large section in the beginning filled with short stories that do a great job at conveying the atmosphere and themes that Adventure! is aiming for as well as giving some background to the game. I found this part to be a very quick and entertaining read. This flows rather seamlessly into providing the setting of the game including locations worldwide and major organizations.
Character creation feels quite similar to other White Wolf storyteller systems. Characters in Adventure! are on the lower end of the power scale so I suspect some of the inherent problems with the Storyteller system in handling high power games will be less prevalent here. Still Adventure! offers players some interesting powers (referred to in the game as "knacks") for characters. They are set into 3 categories which do overlap somewhat but also maintaining their own niches. Coming up with a character concept shouldn't be too hard for most players. Since this is another iteration of the Storyteller system anyone who has played World of Darkness (old or new), Exalted, Scion or (perhaps obviously) other parts of the Aeon Universe should be able to hop into Adventure! with minimal additional learning.
All in all I thought this was a quality game nicely contained into one book. The challenge nowadays is finding a copy as the non-D20 version is quite rare and rather expensive unless you can stumble upon it in a Half-Price Books like I did. The good news is the PDF is reasonably priced and with White Wolf converting their whole catalog to Print on Demand in the future this may be available in print again. I would rate this a 8 out of 10.
Out in PDF and Physical* copy (but physical is long OOP making it quite hard to find)
Links: DriveThruRPG
Next up: Books of Sorcery Volume 2: Black & White Treatise for Exalted (Eoris rules is slowly coming along as well but crunch takes me longer to process)
Character creation feels quite similar to other White Wolf storyteller systems. Characters in Adventure! are on the lower end of the power scale so I suspect some of the inherent problems with the Storyteller system in handling high power games will be less prevalent here. Still Adventure! offers players some interesting powers (referred to in the game as "knacks") for characters. They are set into 3 categories which do overlap somewhat but also maintaining their own niches. Coming up with a character concept shouldn't be too hard for most players. Since this is another iteration of the Storyteller system anyone who has played World of Darkness (old or new), Exalted, Scion or (perhaps obviously) other parts of the Aeon Universe should be able to hop into Adventure! with minimal additional learning.
All in all I thought this was a quality game nicely contained into one book. The challenge nowadays is finding a copy as the non-D20 version is quite rare and rather expensive unless you can stumble upon it in a Half-Price Books like I did. The good news is the PDF is reasonably priced and with White Wolf converting their whole catalog to Print on Demand in the future this may be available in print again. I would rate this a 8 out of 10.
Out in PDF and Physical* copy (but physical is long OOP making it quite hard to find)
Links: DriveThruRPG
Next up: Books of Sorcery Volume 2: Black & White Treatise for Exalted (Eoris rules is slowly coming along as well but crunch takes me longer to process)
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